Semi-individualism
“You are the scenery making a scene for the sake of the scene and the scenery.”
“You are a wake in a wake.”
Semi-individualism is a concept, which suggests that although the popular nomenclature for a “self” refers to an entity separated from its surrounding, thus resulting in an “individual”; I propose that we’re all more accurately described as semi-individuals in that we are an extension of the environment. We are more like group blobs rather than separated points.
Semi-individualism places a heavy admission on the role of environment, technology, media, and socialization in the forming of a “self.” The Information Age and digimodernism have illustrated the role technology and media play in “self” generating. For example, many writers such as Nicholas Carr and Sherry Turkle have pointed out that interacting with computers and the Internet rewires the brain as well as the persona. Furthermore, if one reads a book, or sees a painting, or listens to a song and those media end up having a strong emotional connection, then one’s “self” could become oriented around that. I’ve also called this the “hyperlinked body” and described it as an amalgamation of borrowed medias, slapped together like a shantytown forming a kind of monstrous hermit crab shell—a shell built out of media experiences (books, advertisements, films, song, etc.) that acts as security, shelter, library, barrier, and obfuscator.
For example, a person is only “an American” because the proper media and technology are dotted on the vista of local reality to reinforce such notions (American English, flags, slogans, legal documents, buildings, gestures, customs, manners, etc.)
Semi-individualism also underscores the role of mirror neurons and human-to-human socialization in “self” formation. The imitation we exhibit via mirror neurons has been suggested to be the reason for our species’ “great leap forward,” evolutionarily speaking. Semi-individualism then looks at a person as more of a globule seamlessly connected with all other globules in a dynamic fluid of environment, rather than points or nodes connected by communication wires and relays.
Finally, semi-individualism emphasizes that neither the “self” nor the body can ever be divorced, either physically or psychologically, from the very matrix of the universe, of which is it embedded within. Here the body is thought of as a locally constraint pocket of organized activity, communication, history, feedback, information, and so on—and this pocket is a thread in the fabric of reality, in constant communion with other threads. Herein again there is no room for an individual, only a “semi-individuated.”
“You are not so much an individual self as much as you are an amalgam of last 13 billion years or so of cosmic happenings.”
